Prashikshak Teacher Education Portal Launched in India

स्कूल की बिल्डिंग स्कूल नहीं है। स्कूल का अर्थ तो स्कूल की पढ़ाई है, जो किसी स्कूल में नहीं हो रही। ~ Rakesh Raman

The education minister of India, Smriti Zubin Irani, launched Thursday ‘Prashikshak’ – a teacher education portal for teachers in India.

‘Prashikshak’ aims to strengthen District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) and bring quality teachers into the Indian school education system.

Smriti Irani highlighted the fact that though the Prashiskshak portal has started only for DIETs, it will cover block level institutes in the future and identify gaps at the bottom of the pyramid.

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The minister also announced that the Ministry of Human Resource Development also has plans for enhancing Prashikshak to cover all government teacher education institutions in the country, which are recognized by the National Council for Teacher Education.

She also made an appeal to all State Government teacher education functionaries to make full use of the ‘Prashikshak’ portal to bring about transformative changes in the monitoring system of these institutions.

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According to a government statement, Prashikshak will contain a database of all DIETs in the country with all relevant performance indicators.

It will help benchmark DIETs to enable aspiring teachers to make informed choices about their future. At the same time, it will give the opportunity to Central and State Governments to do real time monitoring of the institutions.

DIETs were created in the early 1990s to strengthen elementary education and support the decentralization of education to the district level, under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme on Teacher Education.

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DIETs offer pre-service and in-service teacher training programmes for government elementary school teachers. They also undertake studies in education, annual academic planning and reviews and function as resource centres for teaching learning and material development.

As on 31.05.2016, 588 DIETs are functioning in the country with an annual intake capacity of 49,026 students.

Photo courtesy: Press Information Bureau